Calibrating a Western Standard
FYI: there's a new magazine starting up in Canada called Western Standard. As it’s being published by Ezra Levant, and being modeled on the recently defunct Alberta Report, it’s going to be the sole conservative, Christian, anti-abortion, pro-American magazine in the country. All the big right-wing Canuck loonies are going to be contributing articles, including my three fave's: Mark Steyn, David Warren and Michael Coren.
My subscription is already in the mail….
Helen Keller And The New Church
I was just reading the latest issue of ISI News (the newsletter of Information Swedenborg Inc.), and in it, there's a short review of Light In My Darkness, the revised edition of Helen Keller's book My Religion. The following paragraph from the conclusion of Chapter 11 (pg145) appears in the review:
"Were I but capable of interpreting to others one-half of the stimulation thoughts and noble sentiments that are buried in Swedenborg's writings, I should help them more than I am ever likely to in any other way. It would be such a joy to me if I might be the instrument of bringing Swedenborg to a world that is spiritually deaf and blind. His volumes are an inexhaustible wellspring of satisfaction to those who lead the life of the mind. If people would only begin to read Swedenborg's books with at first a little patience, they would soon be reading them for pure joy."
And Now For Fun...
What follows are excerpts from Windswept and Waylaid: Dispatches from the Edge of Sorrows, the latest memoirs of traveling duo J.S. Kern and Sandy Papillon, now available in paperback from Kia Ora Press:
Chapter II: Traitor's Talon and the Bandits of the Kahli Irkit
We left the relative sanity of Telawhopa in the gaudiest patchwork taxi this side of Islamabad. Part Mercedes, part Trabant, this vehicular mutt chugged along the twisting goat paths of the Kahli Irkit held together with swaths of orange cotton and a plastic brocade that appeared to be made from shaped sections of discarded Tupperware lids. But, ever grateful for small mercies, I appreciated the diesel fumes from the poorly maintained exhaust system wafting up through the torn Papier-mâché carpeting. The nausea and headache I was developing easily distracted me from the smell of goat spoor and offal emanating from the driver’s mouth, which, unfortunately, turned to spray us with entreaties and narration more often than it remained forward-facing to direct unrecognizable curses at the dust-powdered windshield.
As we bounded along the corrugated hard-pack at a pelvis-cracking pace, I looked over at Sandy to try and gauge her impression of the taxi trip’s “local colour”--as she likes to call anything unsafe, unsound or insane, so long as it has charming cultural antecedents. As usual, she just beamed that excited 12-year old girl smile of hers at me, and went back to holding on to one of the enormous silk tassels swinging wildly from the cabin ceiling. To look at her you’d think we were riding to Ascot in a 30 foot, calf's leather upholstered Roller as the honored guests of Lady Aspertame-in-Sprite and her charming paramour for the day, Tank. Instead we're swinging like khaki gibbons in an Afghani wardrobe being rolled down the jagged side of the Khyber Pass.
The Traitor's Talon is the 100m extension of a kilometer-long finger of rock pointing across the border of Pakistan into Afghanistan. When I first saw it I immediately thought of a petrified ICBM complete with a contrail frozen in stone….
Chapter V: Zeus on the Loose
Like the desk clerk in the Hotel Scoliosis, Athens in July is hot, dusty and old. Even the air in this city seems ancient as it idles familiarly around the historical landmarks of Western civilization. However, unlike the crone at the desk with the poor English and even poorer manners, Athens is noisy. Very noisy. From the minute we stepped out of the airplane the discordant cacophony of shouts, car horns and the bustling hum of humanity took our breath away like steam in a sauna. Only in the limo ride to the hotel was there any respite from the hammering thrum of this teeming, cross-sectioned beehive swirling beneath the blue Aegean sky.
Sandy's not a hotel person. To her, there is something subtly inhospitable in the bland uniformity and sterile fastidiousness inherent in rented rooms. She is particularly unimpressed when staying in any place where the windows don't open. Anything more than two days in the same hermetically sealed cardboard room and she's ready to run through the lobby naked waving a near-empty bottle of Chivas and screaming for oxygen. On those nights I usually find her sleeping at the nearest beach with some newfound friends and a gray, tattered Salvation Army blanket.
Okay, probably not. But I have to write things like that. You see, I usually do the first drafts of these memoirs then hand them to Sandy. Naturally, along with making factual amendments, she edits out everything that is too vulgar, too fanciful or legally actionable. It's a boring bloody job. So, prince amongst men that I am, I like to add the odd line of whimsy for her, just to keep her interest up. That way she'll gladly keep beavering away on the manuscript while I can enjoy the sleep of champions.
Of course, now she'll have to leave that bit about the bottle of Chivas in; or else that last paragraph won't make sense. Which, yes, was my plan all along.
As for the surly clerk and the Hotel Scoliosis, even Sandy just wanted to deal with the registration and get upstairs for a hot shower and at least 5 or 6 hours of straight, uninterrupted sleep. We were supposed to be in Malta by Thursday, which left just two days to experience enough of Greece to keep the publisher happy, so, after the trouble in Israel, we'd need all the rest we could get. But the tight-lipped grin on the unhelpful gnome in charge of the room keys told me that things were about to go terribly awry….
Chapter VIII: A Train of Bastard Children and the Curse of Quisling's Ghost
It's not that Oslo is uglier than Hamburg, or even that it's colder than January in Montreal, that makes it one of the worst cities in Scandinavia. It's things like the disgusting and outrageously over-priced beer; the lack of decent fast-food; or, the unending train of unwed mother's and their bastard children clogging the pavements outside the maddeningly hard to find Post Offices with ski-rigged baby-strollers enveloped in blue clouds of Marlboro smoke.
Everyone in Norway learns to ski from the moment they learn to put on shoes. They ski everywhere. As a Canadian, when I see deep snow outside the front door of a house, I instinctively look for a shovel. But here, the first reaction to the sight of fresh snow is to slap on a pair of skis and glide on over to the corner shop for a newspaper, or 300 grams of finely ground reindeer meat.
On the other hand, whenever Sandy, my intrepid Maori princess, sees snow, she instinctively clutches for a flight schedule and looks frantically for the next plane heading south….
Chapter XI: Constable Di Jones and the Poet of LLandwhaffglae
There is something unbelievably sad about the Welsh. Sure, they're happy enough singing their little hearts out while getting absolutely rat-arsed on strong ale at the local. And, true, they're damned glad to see the total numbers of those afflicted with Black Lung decline to statistical insignificance….
